African Growth and Opportunity Amendment Act

Floor Speech

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Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, later this morning we will vote on whether to invoke cloture on a major cyber security bill. In the past 3 days we have received letters from GEN Keith Alexander, who is the head of Cyber Command as well as the chief of the National Security Agency, from the Secretary of Homeland Security, and from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, urging us to act immediately on this important legislation. Let me read briefly from all three of these letters.

General Alexander said the following:

I am writing to express my strong support for passage of a comprehensive bipartisan cyber security bill by the Senate this week. The cyber threat facing the Nation is real and demands immediate action. The time to act is now; we simply cannot afford further delay.

That is what General Alexander has told us.

Secretary Napolitano wrote to us:

I am writing to express my strong support for S. 3414, the Cybersecurity Act of 2012. I can think of no more pressing legislative need in our current threat environment.

The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Dempsey, wrote the following:

I am writing to add my voice to General Alexander's and urge immediate passage of comprehensive cyber security legislation. We must act now.

How many more implorings do we need from our Nation's top homeland and military officials to act on what many believe to be the greatest threat that is facing our Nation? A cyber attack with catastrophic consequences is a threat to our national security, our economic prosperity and, indeed, to our very way of life. Our adversaries have the means to launch a cyber attack that would be devastating to our country. All the experts tell us, it is not a matter of if a cyber attack is going to be launched, it is when it is going to occur.

So I find it incredible and indeed irresponsible that this body is unable to reach an agreement to allow us to move forward on this important legislation. It is astonishing to me that irrelevant, nongermane amendments have been filed to this important bill on both sides of the aisle. It is unacceptable that we have worked hard and have come up with a list of relevant and germane amendments, and yet we cannot seem to reach an agreement to proceed.

American officials--our government officials--have already documented that our businesses are losing billions of dollars annually and millions of jobs due to cyber attacks, attacks that are happening on our government and business computers and individual computers each and every day.

Yet our defenses are not there. General Alexander, who knows more about the cyber threat than any individual in this country, was asked to rank our preparedness for a large-scale cyber attack on a scale of 1 to 10. Do you know what he said? He deemed us to be at a 3. Is a 3 adequate to protect this country from what we know is coming, that is only a matter of time?

There have been all sorts of suggestions for improving this bill. We have adopted many of those suggestions. Indeed, we have made major changes to make this bill more acceptable to those on my side of the aisle. And what has been our reward? To be criticized for making changes in the bill, for having Members on our side of the aisle, my side of the aisle, say, well, now it is a different bill.

Well, it is a different bill because we took their suggestions, and we took the suggestions of a bipartisan group acting in good faith headed by Senator Kyl and Senator Whitehouse. There is much more I want to say on this issue. I see the chairman has arrived on the floor. I know opponents to the bill such as Senator Hutchison wish to speak and should certainly be given the right to do so. But let me say that rarely have I been so disappointed in the Senate's failure to come to grips with a threat to our country that all of these officials have warned us over and over again is urgent and must be addressed now. Not maybe in September; not probably by the end of the year; not in the next Congress, but now.

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